Found 1643 article(s) in category 'Q1: Economic Growth'

China Is Vulnerable But Deal Unlikely. Robert Lawrence, May 17, 2019, Audio, “Robert Lawrence, Professor of International Trade and Investment at Harvard Kennedy School and former economic advisor to President Clinton, on why a China trade deal is looking unlikely in the near future. Martin Stephan, the Deputy CEO of Carbios, a French recycling biotech company, on their technology that aims for zero plastic waste. Alex Webb, Bloomberg Opinion technology columnist, discusses his column: “Amazon-Deliveroo Alliance Would Eat Uber For Dinner.” Will Rhind, CEO of GraniteShares, with his mid-year outlook on gold and oil. Hosted by Lisa Abramowicz and Paul Sweeney.” Link

Long-Term Firm Growth: An Empirical Analysis of US Manufacturers 1959-2015. Gary Pisano, May 16, 2019, Paper, “Firm growth is an essential feature of market economies, shaping together macroeconomic performance and the evolution of industry structures. As a potential indicator of organizational “ﬁtness” within a competitive environment, ﬁrm growth is also a central concern to both the practice and theory of business strategy. Despite both its theoretical and practical importance, though, growth remains a poorly understood property of ﬁrms. While previous studies have documented the highly skewed nature of ﬁrm growth rates, we know far less about the persistence of growth rates over long-periods of time. For instance, do “fast growers” tend to maintain their relative growth rates advantages over long-periods or is superior growth a transitory phenomenon? Is, as predicted by evolutionary and capability based theories of the ﬁrm, the process of ﬁrm growth path-dependent or is it more akin to a random walk? The answers to these questions are central to building a robust theory of ﬁrm growth.” Link

The Unconventional Capitalism That Shapes Business History. Geoffrey Jones, May 15, 2019, Opinion, “In thinking about the current contested state of global capitalism, and what to do about it, much can be learned from the debates I heard at the recent Harvard Business School conference, Seeking the Unconventional in Forging Histories of Capitalism, which assembled a stellar and diverse cast of historians, management researchers, and others. As co-organizer of the event with HBS Professor Tarun Khanna and Harvard-Newcomen Fellow Sudev J. Sheth, I was thrilled as participants explored, tested, and celebrated unconventional ideas, research topics and methodologies. Too often scholarly–and other–critiques of capitalism and big business resort to stereotypes and generalizations, sweeping the good, the bad, and the ugly into an amorphous single entity. Engaging seriously with the past can be liberating and provide a refreshing lens to think about the future.” Link

The Case For Breaking Up Big Tech. Nancy Koehn, May 15, 2015, Audio, “Calls to break up big tech companies like Facebook and Amazon are getting louder. After Sen. Elizabeth Warren called for Facebook, Google and Amazon to be designated as “platform utilities” and broken apart from their own services that compete on those platforms in March, other Democratic candidates for president have ratcheted up their own rhetoric on the issue. Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes himself has called the social network a monopoly that should be forced to shed Instagram and Whatsapp, two major recent acquisitions. Harvard Business School historian Nancy Koehn joined the conversation on Boston Public Radio Wednesday, delving into the history of antitrust law in America, and ultimately agreeing with those calling for breaking up big tech.” Link

There’s a revealing puzzle in the China tariffs. Lawrence Summers, May 14, 2019, Opinion, “On Monday, China announced new tariffs on $60 billion of U.S. exports, and the United States threatened new tariffs on up to $300 billion of Chinese goods. These actions were cited as the principal reason for a decline of more than 600 points in the Dow Jones industrial average, or about 2.4 percent in broader measures of the stock market. With the total value of U.S. stocks around $30 trillion, this decline represents more than $700 billion in lost wealth. This was not an isolated event. Again and again in the past year, markets have gyrated in response to the state of trade negotiations between the United States and China.” Link

Using Randomized Controlled Trials to Estimate Long-Run Impacts in Development Economics. Michael Kremer, May 13, 2019, Paper, “We assess evidence from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on long-run economic productivity and living standards in poor countries. We first document that several studies estimate large positive long-run impacts, but that relatively few existing RCTs have been evaluated over the long run. We next present evidence from a systematic survey of existing RCTs, with a focus on cash transfer and child health programs, and show that a meaningful subset can realistically be evaluated for long-run effects. We discuss ways to bridge the gap between the burgeoning number of development RCTs and the limited number that have been followed up to date, including through new panel (longitudinal) data; improved participant tracking methods; alternative research designs; and access to administrative, remote sensing, and cell phone data. We conclude that the rise of development economics RCTs since roughly 2000 provides a novel opportunity to generate high-quality evidence on the long-run drivers of living standards.” Link

Effects of Austerity: Expenditure- and Tax-based Approaches. Alberto Alesina, Spring 2019, Paper, “Sometimes governments need to reduce their budget deficits aggressively. These policies are labeled “austerity.” Almost always austerity is needed because excessive debt has been accumulated, as a result of policy mistakes and political distortions (Alesina and Passalacqua 2016; Yared, in this issue). The austerity policies embraced by several European countries starting in 2010 have generated an extraordinarily harsh policy debate. One side has argued that austerity is (almost) always a bad idea. From this perspective, even European countries that were experiencing serious difficulties in financial markets—either by being totally cut off from borrowing like Greece, or by paying high risk premia like Portugal, Spain, Ireland, and Italy—should have continued to stimulate their economies with high levels of government spending. Austerity, the argument continues, was self-defeating because the recessions it induced, or extended, only increased government debt as a ratio of GDP. Blanchard and Leigh (2014) argued that this round of austerity was particularly costly: in other words, fiscal multipliers were especially high. The other side argued that postponing austerity would have caused Effects.” Link

Innovation + Disruption Symposium. Clayton Christensen, May 2019, Video, “On May 5 in New York City, Colgate University will host Innovation + Disruption, a symposium about technology, the liberal arts, and preparing graduates for the future. Clayton Christensen, Kim B. Clark professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School and co-founder of the innovation consulting firm Innosight, will tee up the event with a keynote address titled The Innovative University.” Link

VC: An American History. Tom Nicholas, 2019, Book, “A major exploration of venture financing, from its origins in the whaling industry to Silicon Valley, that shows how venture capital created an epicenter for the development of high-tech innovation. VC tells the riveting story of how the industry arose from the United States’ long-running orientation toward entrepreneurship. Venture capital has been driven from the start by the pull of outsized returns through a skewed distribution of payoffs―a faith in low-probability but substantial financial rewards that rarely materialize. Whether the gamble is a whaling voyage setting sail from New Bedford or the newest startup in Silicon Valley, VC is not just a model of finance that has proven difficult to replicate in other countries. It is a state of mind exemplified by an appetite for risk-taking, a bold spirit of adventure, and an unbridled quest for improbable wealth through investment in innovation.” Link

Understanding and Overcoming Roadblocks to Environmental Sustainability. Past Roads and Future Prospects. Shawn Cole, 2019, Paper, “This working paper examines key barriers to business sustainability discussed at a multidisciplinary conference held at the Harvard Business School in 2018. Drawing on perspectives from both the historical and business literatures, speakers debated the historical success and future opportunities for voluntary business actions to advance sustainability. Roadblocks include misaligned incentives, missing institutions, inertia of economic systems, andthe concept of sustainability itself. It appears that overcoming these roadblocks will require systematic interventions and alternative normative concepts.” Link

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